South Korea creates task group on economic cooperation with Russia and DPRK

This decision is the first step towards implementing South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s Eurasian initiative

SEOUL, January 16. /ITAR-TASS/. South Korea creates a task group to deal with projects on economic cooperation with Russia and North Korea, including a project linking the Trans-Korean Railway with Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway, a South Korean foreign ministry representative said on Thursday.

This decision is the first step towards implementing South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s “Eurasian initiative,” which calls for stronger economic cooperation among Eurasian nations and should ensure broader trade opportunities, the spokesperson said.

The five-member body that is being created at the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s European department is nominally dubbed as a tripartite task group on cooperation among South Korea, North Korea and Russia.

The group’s members will assess ideas of economic cooperation among Russia and the two Koreas. Aside from connection of the two countries’ railways, they will study proposals to lay oil and gas pipelines from Russia to the south through North Korea and a project to supply Russian electric power to the Korean Peninsula.

“The working group will study all problems related to tripartite cooperation,” the South Korean ministry said.

During their November summit in Seoul Russian and South Korean presidents Vladimir Putin and Park Geun-hye signed a memorandum of understanding calling for the participation of South Korean firms in a Russian-led rail and port development project linking North Korea’s northeastern port of Rajin to Russia’s border town of Khasan on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In Rajin a special economic zone will be created.